Florida Gators

Florida at No. 5 Kansas State

* What: SEC/Big 12 Challenge
* When: Saturday, 6 p.m. (ET)
* Where: Bramlage Coliseum / Manhattan, Kan.
* Records: Florida (12-8) / Kansas State (17-3)
* TV: ESPN2 (Rich Hollenberg and Chris Spatola)
* Radio: Gator Sports Network from LEARFIELD (Sean Kelley and Lee Humphrey)

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Projected Starters

Florida	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Colin Castleton	F	6-11 / 231	5th-Senior	15.0 pts / 7.6 reb / 3.2 blk
Will Richard	G	6-5 / 206	Sophomore	10.2 pts / 4.4 reb
Riley Kugel	G	6-5 / 207	Freshman	6.7 pts / 2.2 reb
Myreon Jones	G	6-2 / 177	5th-Senior	4.9 pts / 2.9 reb
Kyle Lofton	G	6-3 / 188	5th-Senior	8.7 pts / 2.8 reb / 3.2 ast

Kansas State	Position	Height / Weight	Class	Statistics
Keyontae Johnson	F	6-6 / 230	Senior	18.3 pts / 7.5 reb
Abayomi Iyiola	F	6-10 / 220	Senior	4.5 pts / 3.5 reb
Nae'Qwan Tomlin	F	6-10 / 210	Junior	10.5 pts / 5.8 reb
Cam Carter	G	6-3 / 190	Sophomore	6.8 pts / 3.0 reb
Markquis Nowell	G	5-8 / 160	Senior	17.1 pts / 3.2 reb / 8.8 ast

The Breakdown

Setup / Series / Last Meeting

Florida and fifth-ranked Kansas State meet in one of the evening matchups of the 10-game SEC/Big 12 Challenge, now in its eighth (and final) year of being staged for maximum exposure as an all-day, cross-regional basketball extravaganza the day before the NFL's conference championship games. ... The Gators are coming off Wednesday's 81-60 victory over South Carolina, one of their best all-around efforts of the season, while the Wildcats lost for just the second time since Dec. 3, falling 80-76 at 12th-ranked Iowa State Tuesday to drop into a three-way tie for first place (With ISU and Texas) in the B12. ... This will be the final season of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge, what with the former soon saying so long to Texas and Oklahoma, perhaps as soon as next season. The ESPN-made event began in 2013, with the Gators participating in all 10 and going 6-3 to date, including last year's 81-72 win over Oklahoma State at Exatech Arena/O'Connell Center. Starting next season, the SEC will play the Atlantic Coast Conference in the "Challenge" format, with the games being staged in December. ... The game will mark just the third meeting between the two schools, with the two prior games both at so-called neutral sites. Unranked Florida defeated sixth-ranked K-State, then coached by Frank Martin, 57-44 in the Orange Bowl Classic at Sunrise, Fla., on Dec. 18, 2010. The Gators went on to win the SEC regular-season title that season and advanced to the Elite Eight. The Wildcats returned the favor two years later, as K-State defeated No. 8 UF 67-61 at sold-out Sprint Center in Kansas City on Dec. 22, 2012, in a game before a wild crowd that was anything but neutral. In that one, guard Will Spradling scored 17 points, grabbed six rebounds and dished five assists without a turnover over 39 minutes, as the Wildcats beat a top-10 non-conference foe for the first time in 32 years. The Gators, who were led by 19 points from junior center Patric Young, came in ranked No. 1 in the country in defense and allowing just 49.6 points per game, but the Wildcats built a 10-point lead at halftime and closed out. That Florida team also went on to capture the SEC's regular-season title and reach the Elite Eight. ... UF coach Todd Golden is 0-1 during his four seasons (three at San Francisco, first at Florida) against the Big 12, with the lone game coming last month in a 62-53 defeat against Oklahoma in the Jumpman Invitational at Charlotte, N.C. 

Tale of the Tape

Florida	Statistics	Opponent
72.7	Scoring	77.8
.441	Field-goal percentage	.467
.330	3-point percentage	.360
65.0	Scoring defense	61.5
.398	Field-goal percentage defense	.423
.315	3-point percentage defense	.290
41st	KenPom.com overall ranking	26th
119th	KenPom.com offensive efficiency	30th
12th	KenPom.com defensive efficiency	40th
62nd	KenPom.com adjusted tempo	90th
46th	NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking	17th
30th	Overall strength of schedule ranking	45th

Team Snapshots

The Gators

If there's a harder four-game swing in all of college basketball than the one Florida is facing the next two weeks, please, let someone know. Yes, right now it's all about K-State in the UF locker room, but there's plenty of external chatter about what's coming down the pike: No. 4 Tennessee (and the nation's best defense) Wednesday at the O'Dome, followed by a trip to

Kentucky (where the Gators have won 10 times in 99 years), then a road date at No. 2 Alabama, which could be No. 1 by then. Florida is 2-30 all-time against top-five teams on the road. ... Wrapped in the five wins over the previous six, the Gators have put together their best back-to-back all-around efforts of the season in defeating Mississippi State on the road and South Carolina at home. In those two games, UF totaled 37 assists, including a season-best 21 against the Gamecocks, to just 14 turnovers, with the fifth-year backcourt of point guard Kyle Lofton and off-guard Myreon Jones combining to dish 22 assists without turning the ball over. Against USC, Jones was spectacular in scoring nine points and carding career highs of 10 rebounds and eight assists, again without giving the ball away. Lofton, who had six assists and eight rebounds in the road win against the Bulldogs a week ago, was 5-for-7 from the floor in the USC game for 10 points, three rebounds, three assists and three steals. The two veterans have developed an undeniable chemistry since assuming what Golden has called a "Batman & Robin" kind of kinship in the SEC opener at Auburn. ... Forward Colin Castleton led UF with 18 points in the USC game, but had just three rebounds, as he was a boxed-out focal point of the Gamecocks. That'll be an issue vs. K-State also, especially if sophomore forward Alex Fudge (7.5 ppg, 5.1 rpg) misses his second consecutive game since a second-half collision at Mississippi State knocked him out of the lineup. Florida is not a good rebounding team (287th on the offensive end, 153rd defense), as USC demonstrated with a 45-36 margin on the glass, 13-6 on the offensive end, with 21 second-chance points. Minus Fudge, the Gators will be undersized against everyone, with Will Richard at the "4" spot and the rapidly improving Riley Kugel and backup Kowacie Reeves (9.4 ppg, 3.1 rpg) taking turns there, as well. Speaking of Kugel, he got his first start since Dec. 7 (just the third of his career) and responded with a career-high 14 points on six of nine shooting and 2-for-4 from the arc. He's averaging 9.5 points over the previous five games on 54-percent shooting overall and 53 from distance. Reeves? That 2-for-28 slump from 3 through the SEC's first six games has given way to 5-for-13 the last two, with nine and 15 points, respectively. ... Backup point guard Trey Bonham is going through a tough scoring spell with four points over his previous six games, but he came off the bench and dished four assists without a turnover in 13 minutes against South Carolina. ... Jason Jitoboh went five straight games without making a field goal, as well as nine straight with just one, but has two in each of the last two games. He did foul out, however, in just under 15 minutes Wednesday, but he gave Castleton some minutes to rest. Backup guard Niels Lane one-upped Jitoboh, though. In his first action since Dec. 4, Lane fouled out in 5:30 of playing time. Got his money's worth, though.

The Wildcats

They're in Season 1 under Jerome Tang, who after spending the last 19 years as a top lieutenant to Scott Drew at Baylor got his first head-coaching job and is very much in the mix for National Coach of the Year honors. Tang inherited a program that had posted three straight losing seasons and gone 13-41 in league under Bruce Weber, who was fired last spring. Enter

Tang, whose team won 16 of its first 17 to rocket into the rankings and sit in first place in the Big 12 standings. Ten days ago, the Wildcats upset reigning NCAA champion and cross-state (and hated) rival Kansas, an outcome that led to a court-storming years in the making. Tang took the microphone and told his fans they "get one" of those court chaos moments. Instead, expect to win big. ...  Obviously, the storyline of this one begins and ends with Keyontae Johnson, one of just three players of the post-Billy Donovan era to garner first-team All-SEC honors (2020) for the Gators, but whose horrific collapse at Tallahassee on Dec. 12, 2020 and feel-good comeback will be front and center. Johnson was not medically cleared to play at Florida (or a bunch of other places), but he was at K-State and he's doing Keyontae things, leading the team in scoring, shooting 54.6 percent from the floor, 39 from distance and getting to the free-throw line where he's converting at 74.3 percent. Johnson leads the team in rebounds and is second in steals. Basically, he's on his way to first-team All-Big 12 honors, if not some All-America teams. ... As great as Johnson has been, the Wildcats go as goes point guard Marquis Nowell, in his second since since transferring from Arkansas-Little Rock. He and Johnson account for 45 percent of the Wildcats' scoring, but Nowell also averages over eight assists, is one of the best in his league at drawing fouls and converts at the line at nearly 88 percent. ... K-State gets production from two former SEC starters in Cam Carter, who played sparingly at Mississippi State, and backup guard Desi Sills (8.6 ppg, 3.2 rpg), who played last season at Arkansas State after transferring from Arkansas. ... Forward Nae'Qwan Tomlin was a hot shot Florida junior college prospect at Chipola. He scores it at nearly 46 percent and leads the team in blocks with 26. ... Reserve guard Ismael Massoud (5.8 ppg) is in his second KSU season after two at Wake Forest. He plays just 15 minutes per game, but is coming off the bench with his 3-point gun loaded. He's at 22-for-42 from distance on the season. That's 52 percent. ... The Wildcats will get starters minutes from backup post man David N'Guessan (7.2 ppg, 4.7 rpg), who is at nearly 68 percent from the floor, almost exclusively roaming the paint. When he does stray outside, though, better watch him. N'Guessan has made three of his six 3-balls. 

Numbers of Note

* .000 — Florida's all-time winning percentage against non-conference opponents ranked in the AP Top 5 when playing on the road, based on the Gators' 0-9 record, with their last crack a 58-52 loss at No. 1 Michigan State on Dec. 12, 2015.

* .066 — Florida's all-time winning percentage against top-five teams on the road, based on that 2-30 record mentioned above. Both of those victories came at Kentucky, when the Wildcats were No. 4 in both 1966 and '88). 

* plus-97 — Combined on-court scoring ratio of Lofton and Jones during UF's run of five wins over the previous six. 

* 789 — Points scored by Johnson during his two-plus seasons with the Gators. He shot 52 percent from the floor, 37.6 from the 3-point line, 72.1 from the free-throw and grabbed 468 rebounds. Johnson averaged 14.1 points and 7.1 boards during his first-team All-SEC season in 2020. 

* 1,063 — Points scored at Kansas State by former Florida coach Lon Kruger, who was a two-time Big 12 Player of the Year (1973 and '74) after leading the Wildcats to back-to-back conference championships. Kruger also started at shortstop on the K-State baseball team and in 1988 was head coach when he guided the program to its first Elite Eight in seven seasons (the Wildcats have only been twice since, in 2010 and '18). In 1990, Kruger was named coach at UF. 
 

Bottom Line

This game was scheduled long before Johnson and his family finalized his difficult decision to play and went through the transfer process. It just worked out, as far as the programs that cleared him medically, it would be at a Big 12 outpost that has played the Gators only twice in history.